Author: Teresa Berger

Teresa Berger is Professor of Liturgical Studies and Thomas E. Golden Jr. Professor of Catholic Theology at Yale. Her newest monograph, titled "@ Worship: Liturgical Practices in Digital Worlds" is published by Routledge (July 2017). Berger has also written extensively on liturgy and gender.

As someone who has had her own struggles with the Vatican, its offices, and its highest ecclesial court (over teaching appointments at Catholic Faculties), I experience the current crisis in ecclesial governance and leadership as nothing particularly new. What sustained me then continues to sustain me now: the insight that my baptismal belonging to this church always also means the willingness to be ashamed of what I belong to. Belonging and that willingness go together, there is no belonging — not even in the Church — outside of that pain.

How do we ask for forgiveness authentically? What is needed for the sound of our asking to ring true, and deeply so? (I remember a spectacularly naïve request for forgiveness I received a few years ago, and I still cringe in pain). One thing I do know: being able to say, straightforwardly, the words “forgive me” is a step in the right direction. The simple words say so much more than “I am sorry.” For one, “forgive me” voices a direct request to another, who by these two words is rendered visible as the one who has been wronged.

I began to wonder — in the face of Thomas More’s deep desire to join others in worship again – about our own longings when it comes to liturgy. I will be the first to admit that “longing for liturgy” is not what motivates me on any given Sunday morning.

Asking God’s protection on travelers is a traditional Catholic practice that has deep roots in the scriptural witness; it is also, as I discovered many years ago, a profoundly meaningful practice for our own lives.